CCP Games reveals their World of Darkness MMOG, confirming
indications from earlier this year that such a project is in the
works (thanks
World of Darkness Online). In 2006 CCP merged with White Wolf,
creators of the pen-and-paper World of Darkness RPG, paving the way for this
move. The confirmation of the World of Darkness MMOG is a side-note in
a post about CCP's
contributions to the economy in the state of Georgia that says the
following: "Its flagship property, the World of Darkness, has a rich history of
over 18 years of creative development and is now the basis of one of CCP's major
virtual world projects. Currently in preproduction, The World of Darkness is the
undying heart of the development efforts in CCP's North American office."
The earlier story about this project was based on a document that
described it, though keep in mind this is from July, 2008, and may not reflect
current plans (for instance it mentions a 2010 release date that is undoubtedly
inaccurate). So here's a bit from that summer 2008 document:

"In the
World of Darkness, you are the monster, struggling to remember the memory of
your humanity while you struggle against the evil that lurks within us all. CCP
and White Wolf are now hard at work in pre-production on the World of Darkness
the persistent world. Given the World of Darkness legacy, its large fan base,
and proven appeal to both genders, we estimate the subscriber potential of this
product to be two to three times that of EVE Online, without competing head on
with CCP’s existing products thus enabling wider total appeal."

You will progress from A thru Z how they want you to progress (ie. quest and xp grinding via killing) and this is why a lot of great pen & paper systems fail time and time again when put into the computer just like you did in every other WoD PC game made before this.

Yes, all two of them. And I thought Bloodlines was great. Obviously, no CRPG will be as open-ended as a PnPRPG. However, CRPGs have strengths in other areas: presentation, voice-acting, story, etc. A CRPG is just a more focused PnPRPG.

I have no interest in spending hours and hours researching a game before I play it. You can say that it's my fault, I say it's the developer's fault for not giving you a solid enough foundation to give a total n00b a snowball's chance in hell.

EVE is a complex game where actions have consequences. If a player won’t complete the tutorials, read the wiki, or use the rookie help channel then they will fail horribly.

As for the scandals, that’s more a result of everyone playing on one server. “Teenaged GM on a power trip” is a problem in other games, but they don’t affect every single player since the little miscreants are spread out over many servers.

Dude... Isn't there a spreadsheet program in Eve Online? I know lots of people at least have Excel open when they play.

I'm not saying you CAN'T play the game that way. I'm saying you don't HAVE to play it that way. Lots of people are pirates, bounty hunters(of both players and NPCs alike), people play missions and get into research and production. The idea is that you have all these OPTIONS. You then choose what you want to do. And not only can you choose to do one of those things...you could choose to do all of them in as little or large amounts as suits you.

Well excuse me for not spending 10 hours reading up on the game before I launched it for the first time. I had this insane idea that maybe, MAYBE I was supposed to... I dunno... play it and enjoy it without having to do a research paper on it? Is that too much to ask?

Or maybe you could have, I dunno, followed the tutorial through to the end. And I know reading is hard...but was it so hard to read the pop-up that ALWAYS shows up for you when you enter unsecure space? That happens until you turn off that option in the preferences. The game gives you plenty of warning when you head into PVP-possible areas. I know...too hard to figure out the obvious.

Good for your friend. I wanted to play a game and have fun. Not pay for a game that doubles as a job. If I wanted to do that, I'd go subscribe to Final Fantasy 11.

I'm sorry...I didn't realize that all games had to be WoW and satisfy the lowest common denominator of human intelligence. I must have missed that decree.

Once again, it's a question of effort vs enjoyment. I have no interest in spending hours and hours researching a game before I play it

I think you have no interest in putting any effort at all into getting to know a game that doesn't come right out and hold your hand like you were a little kid. EVE is full of information, an extensive tutorial and PLAYERS all willing to help you if really wanted to learn what the game is about.

I played that game for more than a year and a half and lost 3 ships total and never got my pod destroyed. Spent a hell of a lot of time in lawless space and had a blast doing what I wanted to do. Some people have trouble if there aren't direction arrows pointing everything out to them...some people like to learn as they go along and try new things. You know...use their actual brains...

It IS the case. CCP would make certain ships indestructible in fleet actions in order to "further" the story they wanted. They admitted this.

Funny...I never saw CCP admit to this. And I followed that entire mess on their forums for several months. This was after I left the game, but I was morbidly curious to see how it all played out.

One of the guys who did news coverage in game pissed off a player who was friends with an admin, and the reporter not only got nerfed, if memory serves he got banned completely, and booted out of the IRC channel set up for people like him. This is well documented.

That entire scenario was crafted by a member of a certain faction and CCP came out and denounced it as a total lie. They never admitted to that and it's not documented anywhere else except in an email that could have come from anywhere.

CCP's employees were engaging in economy-rigging by duplicating items for their friends and then flooding/rigging the market, resulting in trillions in fraud. This is documented, and CCP has admitted to this.

This part is true and they admitted to a single employee doing just that. The whole thing started because they chose not to fire him and instead kept it hidden from the community in general. A bad idea, and I will admit it damaged their credibility.

Look, if EVE isn't your bag, that's fine. I do, however, believe you should use your brain and realize that it's a VERY popular MMO. And it's popular for exactly the reasons that you claim aren't enjoyable. Which means that there is immense enjoyment to be found in the game if you're willing to put some effort into learning it and playing it.

You obviously aren't and that's fine. But claiming that this new MMO by CCP will fail because it will be anything like EVE is silly. It won't be the same genre of game apart from it being an MMO. SO I'm willing to wait and see what CCP comes up with before I go making huge assumptions about something that's still in pre-production.

It's funny...but there are 300K people who don't think this is the case. I played EVE for more than a year and I mostly blew crap up. But if you want to grind your ass off...sure you most certainly can.

Dude... Isn't there a spreadsheet program in Eve Online? I know lots of people at least have Excel open when they play.

No...YOU undid all your work by carelessly flying into unsecure space. EVE isn't a 'hold-your-hand, awwww it's too bad' MMO. You obviously never took the time to learn about it. One of my friends became a billionaire on EVE without ever leaving secure space. And did you insure your ship? I'm gonna go ahead and guess no.

Well excuse me for not spending 10 hours reading up on the game before I launched it for the first time. I had this insane idea that maybe, MAYBE I was supposed to... I dunno... play it and enjoy it without having to do a research paper on it? Is that too much to ask?

Good for your friend. I wanted to play a game and have fun. Not pay for a game that doubles as a job. If I wanted to do that, I'd go subscribe to Final Fantasy 11.

As for insurance, if memory serves, I didn't even *know* you could insure your ship. Once again, it's a question of effort vs enjoyment. I have no interest in spending hours and hours researching a game before I play it. You can say that it's my fault, I say it's the developer's fault for not giving you a solid enough foundation to give a total n00b a snowball's chance in hell.

Even if this was the case, if the game isn't a sandbox game with a completely player-driven economy, how is it even relevant?

It IS the case. CCP would make certain ships indestructible in fleet actions in order to "further" the story they wanted. They admitted this. One of the guys who did news coverage in game pissed off a player who was friends with an admin, and the reporter not only got nerfed, if memory serves he got banned completely, and booted out of the IRC channel set up for people like him. This is well documented. CCP's employees were engaging in economy-rigging by duplicating items for their friends and then flooding/rigging the market, resulting in trillions in fraud. This is documented, and CCP has admitted to this.

Frankly, CCP has, at best, a spotty record on their professionalism. I'm waiting for the WoD equivalent of some idiot who's messenger friends with a CCP dev who has a vampire getting a lightsaber (true story from Vampire LARP).

It's funny...but there are 300K people who don't think this is the case. I played EVE for more than a year and I mostly blew crap up. But if you want to grind your ass off...sure you most certainly can.

I tried EO, and I grinded for like 6 hours to get a cargo miner, went one sector out of the starting area, and a guy ransomed my ship for 100,000 credits, which of course I didn't have being a newbie, and he blew me up and undid all my work.

No...YOU undid all your work by carelessly flying into unsecure space. EVE isn't a 'hold-your-hand, awwww it's too bad' MMO. You obviously never took the time to learn about it. One of my friends became a billionaire on EVE without ever leaving secure space. And did you insure your ship? I'm gonna go ahead and guess no.

Also, can we assume at this point that CCP WON'T rig the game, cheat, and basically destroy any semblance of balance behind the scenes before players even log on? Can we assume that uber-geeks who get chummy with the devs won't have the weight to completely screw with the other players? The ethical behavior of CCP in the past has been... questionable at best.

Even if this was the case, if the game isn't a sandbox game with a completely player-driven economy, how is it even relevant?

I'm all for a WoD game. CCP can't pull this off though. Or to put it another way, it would be a miracle - literally - if they did.

"You can check your anatomy all you want, and even though there may be normal variation, when it comes right down to it, this far inside the head it all looks the same. No, no, no, don't tug on that. You never know what it might be attached to."

It wasn't until a year after it came out that I 'gave in' and bought the new World of Darkness core book. I was amazed, the systems were so much more fluid, so compact and simple yet capable of so much. The mood of the setting so fleshed out, my mind was a flurry of ideas. I quickly went and bought Vampire the Requiem and while I still felt I didn't like the Factions and was still miffed at only 5 Clans, I read it anyway and fell in love. Requiem is simply amazing and fun as hell to play.

The mechanics work better. On the other hand, they've gone so anti-metaplot that they attacked the actual setting with a hatchet. There is almost no innate conflict in the game other than party conflict and the occasional dickhead vampire. Doing away with generation also means that incredibly potent vampires are much rarer, and some of that arrogance that came from being an ancient, low-gen vampire is gone, since you're only one dirt nap away from being a n00b like everyone else again.

I've been generally unimpressed by the settings. A lot of the stuff seems to have been changed simply for the "HEY IT'S NEW!" factor. Werewolf I think was the biggest letdown for me. Granted, the eco-terrorist thing was a little cheesy, but it worked, there was a LOT of conflict that a player could get into, and now there's... "Defend your territory from spirits" and the Pure tribes. WTF?

Have you played Eve Online? That right there is about as far as you can GET from typical MMOG.

Oh yeah, Eve Online... the job you pay to work at.

I tried EO, and I grinded for like 6 hours to get a cargo miner, went one sector out of the starting area, and a guy ransomed my ship for 100,000 credits, which of course I didn't have being a newbie, and he blew me up and undid all my work.

I uninstalled and didn't ever play again after that. That was my experience with EO.

Also, can we assume at this point that CCP WON'T rig the game, cheat, and basically destroy any semblance of balance behind the scenes before players even log on? Can we assume that uber-geeks who get chummy with the devs won't have the weight to completely screw with the other players? The ethical behavior of CCP in the past has been... questionable at best.

I don't have a lot of hope for a good WoD game, but it was inevitable. We'll see.

vampire (won't that suck in the games day/night cycle if you cannot play for half the day?)

I'll bet money that there is no day/night cycle, only night.

I've been a fan of, and have played, world of darkness for a long, long time. White Wolf, and CCP by extension, have this thing. It's called "what the Vampire fans want, the Vampire fans get". They complained that Vampires should be just as physically strong and combat capable as werewolves, so the new edition nerfed werewolves significantly. They complained that changelings originally got really weird and fantastic powers, so they created a vampire who was also a changeling. The Vampire fans complained that high level mages could turn a vampire into a lawn chair, so in the next edition they went out of their way to make that exceedingly prohibitive. Vampire is the "star" of WoD, even if the other beasties are in "parallel" universes where the rogue's gallery of baddies don't exist, as it was in the old World of Darkness where each game was an independent, isolated "world". Now Vampires are *the* star since everything is meant to cross over these days.

Therefore, an MMO where vampires are only active during the night, which let's face it, would be almost mandatory to reflect their monstrous nature, will go by the board before an alpha model is even knocked up. I bet if you go to white wolf's forums right now there are people screaming about this very thing. Thus, no day/night cycle I bet.

I really have no desire to play in this game. The new WoD settings bore me, if the game is anything like White Wolf's business model, the core game will barely be playable, but there will be a large assortment of expansions and specialty characters available for a 10 dollar charge plus maybe an extra buck or two a month (WW is infamous for raping you for your money), and the game will probably shift to a combat focus. Which is fine for werewolves, but for Vampires, which are supposed to be social creatures, and mages, who have literally an "if I can think of it and I'm powerful enough, I can do it" magic system, I don't see how this will work. Mages, if they keep them, will get it in the shorts for sure.

Sadly it's in the new world, not like Bloodlines any more, an example they killed off several clans, one a favorite of mine the Malkavians.

Well the new WoD and Vampire: the Requiem is far more deep then V:tM was, and while I was one of those pissed that they 'killed off' my old favorite clans and created all new factions that work nothing like the old Camarilla vs Sabbat.

It wasn't until a year after it came out that I 'gave in' and bought the new World of Darkness core book. I was amazed, the systems were so much more fluid, so compact and simple yet capable of so much. The mood of the setting so fleshed out, my mind was a flurry of ideas. I quickly went and bought Vampire the Requiem and while I still felt I didn't like the Factions and was still miffed at only 5 Clans, I read it anyway and fell in love. Requiem is simply amazing and fun as hell to play.

As to your favorite clan, Malkavian, it isn't gone. It's now a bloodline. (And not the one in the back of Requiem, Malkovian.) They are in Clanbook: Ventrue as a Bloodline. A number of the other old Masquerade clans have come back as bloodlines, (some with different names and powers altered to fit the new system, sometimes making them even cooler than before.) This includes the Toreador, the Bruja, the Assamites, the Lasombra and Giovanni. Other bloodlines are similar yet different to other clans from Masquerade as well.

Before I crucify it, I'll wait and see. CCP is an independent game developer. They self-published EVE from what I remember and I don't think they are attached to anyone like EA/Activison/Sony.

That's what helped make EVE a success IMO. It may just be that their flexibility makes this game worthwhile. Of course it's still an MMO and there needs to be rules that govern the game as a whole...so if you want the PnP experience, then stick to playing PnP.

I don't think MMOs are about recreating the classic tabletop gaming experience in any case. And I never expect that from them. YMMV.

Actually you are hiliting a huge problem with RPGs in general and why they translate so poorly to the PC and why a WoD MMO won't be as good as anyone would really hope. In pen & paper settings the game is what you make of it with your group of friends and the experiance you bring in, you also have the benefit of a unique storyteller/DM/GM who helps deliver the little nuances and house rules that your group wants to make the experiance fun. But on the PC you are limited to an unwavering rules based sandbox (at best), there are no house rules or do what you want. You will progress from A thru Z how they want you to progress (ie. quest and xp grinding via killing) and this is why a lot of great pen & paper systems fail time and time again when put into the computer just like you did in every other WoD PC game made before this.

Based on what you are saying, you want Ultima Online but with World of Darkness, but you and I both know what you will get is another EQ/WoW/WAR clone because thats what some penny-pinching executive feels is needed to recoup the costs and attract existing MMO players. I agree that its not quite what the game needs to succeed, but its what is going to happen with all the money that will be invested in it.

This is one of the few game settings that actually has a chance at getting something like WoW's numbers, assuming that the gameplay is equally sticky. World of Darkness has huge numbers of fans, perhaps not as quite many as Star Trek, but they're far more game-oriented and FAR more fanatic on average.

What I'm not so sure about is CCP's ability to turn out a game with such broad appeal. I don't think that targeting an audience of griefers is going to make it. And taking two years after release to make the game fun (like they did with Eve) isn't going to help them reach millions of players either. It needs to be fun right out of the gate...I guess we'll see if they have what it takes to do that.

Maybe, but they'll definitely get a solid look from me. If they put together a half-decent MMOG, but manage to get the richness of the universe into the game, it'll be very cool. The last Vampire game showed a lot of potential.